I'm afraid I still think you have it back to front. It's the authors who offer the restrictive contracts to the publishers, not vice versa. A world-wide publisher such as, say, Penguin, would like nothing better than to acquire world-wide rights to a book, but very often the author holds out for, say, separate UK and US rights because they can make more money that way.

The average author writes their own contract? I honestly don't know, but that's not what I would have guessed.

The average author writes their own contract? I honestly don't know, but that's not what I would have guessed.

No; the author (or rather, their agent) attempts (naturally enough) to maximise the income from a book by offering the rights to the book to different publishers in different countries. Two contracts means, for example, two advances. Hence the extremely common situation of different British and American publishers for the same book.

Bottom line, we can't rationalize away piracy. The only thing that can be done is to make piracy undesirable, so people won't want to be bothered doing it in significant numbers. And the best way to do that is to make products available in an easy and reasonable package, so people won't think twice about just buying them.

That's pretty much what Amazon have done with their Kindle. They made it easy to buy (no computer needed, ready to read within a few seconds of bying), at the sort of prices that make it pointless spending time looking for free copies (at least for the publishers who understand the problem ...).

JA Konrath did an experiment on piracy a few months ago, he said it didn't affect his Kindle sales in any way. I think the reason for that is more to do with Amazon than anything else.

An Aussie iPad user PoV: we were all delighted over here when iBooks was available to us for our iPads. When my iPad arrived, the second thing I did after setup of email etc was to download the iBooks app. Then, I visited the iBooks store, looking for stuff to buy. All I could get was free books. The old classics. Stuff I can get from Project Gutenberg and other sources. My iPad arrived in July... and guess what... here we are in October and we still do not have access to the same bookstore that's available in the US.

Geographical restrictions, stubborn publishers: they are both feeding the piracy "industry". And, like others have noted: I won't buy something thats DRM'd and I won't buy it if its as expensive or nearly as expensive as a paper copy. I use Stanza now, I get what I want from "other sources" (including Baen, fictionwise and Munseys)

This might shock you, but they already understand that, but they're dead set on absolutely NOT allowing that in any way. It's the same thing that the music industry went through in the beginning, and sadly enough, the publishing industry will be forced to suffer through the same things as well, because despite all the lessons learned by the industries that are or have already gone through these transitions, they will not make the changes they need to adapt to the changing market until absolutely forced to, instead choosing legal means by which to stall the market until the absolute last minute, and then manage the changeover in their favor when it finally happens. Overall it's a managed market shift disguised as a impending disaster.

Ya know what, I hope piracy goes through the roof! To jerk their customers around like this just because THEY don't WANT to change is just plain wrong.

I always try to do the right thing, but if these businesses are intent on doing the wrong thing just so that they can drag their heels, then screw them.

Cause and effect. I will adjust my behavior to match the behavior of these businesses.

Steven Lake is right: the publishers will wait until money is running out of their pockets before they'll change. Do you think Universal & Fox launched Hulu because they desperately wanted to convenience their viewers who'd missed shows on the air? Hellz no! They did it to compete with YouTube, where their product was being posted without their consent, and with no money coming into their pockets.

The publishers will follow the music & tv industry model: wait until it's obvious that consumers will find their digital products without their consent, then belatedly offer their wares in the digital format.

I'm afraid I still think you have it back to front. It's the authors who offer the restrictive contracts to the publishers, not vice versa. A world-wide publisher such as, say, Penguin, would like nothing better than to acquire world-wide rights to a book, but very often the author holds out for, say, separate UK and US rights because they can make more money that way.

How would that be right? I am involved in writing and maintaining engineering contracts and it is the contractor that agrees to conditions set in an offered contract not the other way around.

I take issue with the fact that the filetypes are so branded. I don't have to have a Sony mp3 player to play Sony mp3's... why should I need a Sony reader to read Sony ebooks? (And Amazon and Nook, etc.) At some point this process needs to become painless for the consumer.

Yup, and it has been made easy. See below.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

That's pretty much what Amazon have done with their Kindle. They made it easy to buy (no computer needed, ready to read within a few seconds of bying), at the sort of prices that make it pointless spending time looking for free copies.

This is one of the main reasons it is difficult to get a ground swell of support for dropping DRM ... because for most customers, in fact, it doesn't get in the way. The most common "glitch" is "I can't lend the file" but the reality is you can lend the Kindle in exactly the same you you'd loan the paperback.